A month ago I posted a piece on cutsblog suggesting that ministers were "having it both ways" on the politically charged issue of whether homeless families in London should be moved to cheap temporary accommodation outside the capital.

I pointed out that while ministers publicly disapproved of councils that house families far from their home borough, the government's own homeless advisor, Andy Gale, was suggesting at private briefings to councils in the capital that they might want to do exactly this, using new powers given to them by the government.

That, in my opinion, suggested ministers had taken a cynical position: essentially, imposing a draconian welfare regime which they knew full well gave councils little option but to "export" homeless families outside London, then chastising them for doing so.

Within roughly an hour of the piece appearing, I had a phone call from the press office at the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG). The press officer aggressively demanded that the post be taken down immediately and a correction issued, on the grounds that it was "factually incorrect and misleading".

I referred the complaint to the Guardian's readers editor, who decided not take the article down but put the following note on it, pending further inquiries:

Update: This article is subject to a complaint from the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG), who say that Andy Gale is not employed by the department and that it has no contractual arrangements with him.

My argument rested on the assumption that Gale had a formal role as the government's homelessness advisor. This was how Gale, who is renowned as an authority on homelessness policy and law, had presented himself at numerous recent housing conferences and briefings, and in promotional literature for conferences in the future. Indeed, I'd referred to him as the government's advisor in a prominently displayed Guardian news story some days earlier, and there had not been a flicker of complaint, from any quarter.

DCLG however, was adamant: Gale was a private consultant, and the briefing of his that I'd reported on represented his private views and advice. Gale, their answers strongly suggested, was nothing to do with them. The DCLG press office wrote to me in an email:

He [Gale] has advised the Government in the past, but he is not employed or seconded by DCLG, and it's not true that this advice reflects our views. This alleged advice was not paid for, or commissioned by, or given to DCLG.

This was curious. I pointed out to DCLG that Gale frequently presented himself as the government's homeless advisor. I had copies of housing conference programmes (also attended by DCLG officials) where he was prominently listed as such. The DCLG press office replied that it had been unaware, until my blog post appeared, that Gale had been regularly assuming this title: officials had telephoned Gale that afternoon it said, after seeing my post, and asked him to desist from using the term:

He has been told he should not present himself as a government advisor, and he accepted that.

I asked DCLG whether it was the case that Gale was paid, directly or indirectly by DCLG, advising councils on homelessness issues. It replied: "We have no contractual arrangements with Mr Gale," and urged me again to take down the "misleading" blog post as soon as possible.

But they pointedly hadn't answered my question. So I tried again:

I would like answers to my detailed questions about any consultancy arrangements Andy Gale may have or have had directly or indirectly with CLG. I think it is very important.

The DCLG press office replied:

We do not employ Andy Gale. He is an advisor to Newham BC [borough council]. We have no contractual arrangement with him. You need to speak to the council(s) who use him as an advisor. What's not clear about this?

At this point I was beginning to wonder whether Gale was an imposter, or a rogue operative, rather than the professionally respected, if controversial, authority on homelessness that I had heard about. So I called him.

Gale seemed a little nervous. He told me DCLG had ordered him not to speak to me. But before he ended the call he told me that he worked for DCLG two days a week as a "practitioner advisor," rather than a "policy advisor" and was paid "through a third party."

So, DCLG said Gale didn't work for them, but Gale said he did. Who was telling the truth?

At this point I'd started to get private tweets and calls from readers and contacts who had read the Reader's Editor's note on my post. The general tenor of these was incredulity: they'd sat in conferences and briefings with Gale where he'd introduced himself as the government's homelessness advisor; they'd assumed that Gale spoke with DCLG authority. Gale, they said, was a well-known expert: why would they not assume he was a government advisor?

I called a well-known professional conferences firm. One of their upcoming events listed Gale as a DCLG advisor. They were surprised to hear that DCLG did not consider Gale to be an government advisor; indeed, they had booked Gale for this conference on the basis that he was the government's man just a few weeks previously, in October, via his "DCLG email address." Gale they regarded as "a very good addition" to the roster, because it was always good to get someone "from the key departments."

Another source confirmed to me that Gale had very recently communicated with them on business matters using his DCLG email account (and showed me a copy of the email). So, while DCLG told me Gale had ceased formally being an employee of the department in 2008, it appeared not to have noticed that for the past four years Gale had been using an official government email address to conduct what it had suggested to me was his own entirely private business.

Two days after the piece appeared I emailed Gale at his government account. It didn't bounce back.

I was curious: what was Gale's relationship with DCLG? Why were they so keen to distance themselves from him? And who was the third party that was paying Gale, and why?

I sent out two Freedom of Information requests: one to DCLG, and one to the London borough of Newham, which DCLG said employed Gale as an advisor. I asked each for details of any correspondence providing evidence of a contractual relationship between them and Andy Gale or Andy Gale consulting. In due course, Newham responded, and their reply went some way to answering my questions.

Gale, it turned out, was indeed not employed directly by DCLG. But unbelievably, the emails revealed the department was directly paying Newham to "host" Gale, precisely to advise local authorities on how to tackle homelessness

On 3 February 2012 an unnamed DCLG civil servant (the name is redacted) wrote to Newham:

I believe Andy has spoken to you about Newham hosting Andy Gale to continue to provide support to local authorities to tackle homelessness. I would be most grateful if Newham are able to help in this respect.
The objective is for Andy to continue to provide support for two day a week to local authorities. DCLG would provide additional grant funding to Newham this financial year of £72,000.

The £72,000 government grant comprised £52k to pay Gale, £10,000 for his travel and hotels cost, and £10,000 for Newham's administrative costs. The memo went on:

Andy is self-employed as a sole trader consultant and would invoice Newham directly for the days worked within the budget set.

Gale, says the memo, was "happy to provide 10 days additional free consultancy to Newham as he is grateful that the council may be willing to host the post."

It adds:

I would be grateful if you could confirm that Newham are content to help. We would make this additional funding available in the current year (11/12) and could get the payment across to you at the end of the month. This would give you the flexibility to carry it forward to next year to meet the costs of hosting Andy Gale.

Within two hours, Newham had confirmed that it was "happy to host the arrangement." The DCLG civil servant replied:

Brilliant. Will get back to you with precise timings of payment.

I asked Newham why CLG had approached them to host Gale. It replied:

We commissioned Andy Gale originally to provide some consultancy advice on the development of our new housing allocation policy. Then subsequently, CLG asked if we would be prepared to host his post, funded by CLG. This was a task previously carried out by Croydon Council. CLG had also arranged that.
Andy Gale had attended the London Councils homelessness group meetings and offered his availability for consultancy which would be funded by CLG.

So why was DCLG so keen to insist that Gale was not a government advisor, when the rest of the world, including Gale himself, believed Gale to be exactly that? Why did it insist they had no direct or indirect contractual arrangements with Gale, when, it turns out, it had all along sought out Newham council and paid them £72,000 to employ Gale? And why did it pay local authorities to employ Gale, rather than hiring him directly?

My FOI request to DCLG has not yet been answered. But the Labour MP Karen Buck - who had contacted me after she saw the note on my blog - asked a parliamentary question (PQ) about Andy Gale last week. I asked DCLG to comment on some of the issues raised in this blog today, before publication, and it referred me to housing minister Mark Prisk's answer to Buck's PQ (published today), which it said set out its position on the matter:

Ms Karen Buck:To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, which local authorities have received grants from his Department to employ Andy Gale Consultants in each of the last three financial years.
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, on how many occasions his Department has recommended Andy Gale Consultants to local authorities in each of the last three financial years.
Mr Mark Prisk:Andy Gale is not employed by the Department, is not contracted to the Department and, for the avoidance of doubt, does not speak for the Department. He was formerly employed by the Department in 2007. From 2008 onwards, I understand he has acted as a homelessness consultant to a number of local authorities. Under this and the last Administration, the Department has provided grant funding to a number of local authorities to support the provision of advice on preventing homelessness to complement the funding we provide to the voluntary sector. I understand that Mr Gale was commissioned by the London Borough of Croydon from 2008 to 2011 and currently by the London Borough of Newham as one of those providers of preventing homelessness advice. Whilst officials have had contact on how such departmental funding has been spent, Ministers in this Administration have had no involvement with local authorities on commissioning such services.

What is all this maddening DCLG defensiveness about? On the one hand Gale, it clearly believed, was eminently qualified to advise local authorities on how to address what inevitably would be (for some councils) politically unpalatable decisions around homelessness provision and social housing allocation as a result of welfare reform and the Localism Act. So much so, that it paid Newham £72,000 to enable him to do this.

And yet when Gale's professional advice started being circulated beyond private briefings to council officers and turned the focus of a heated political debate about the traumatic consequences of welfare reform onto ministers, they effectively cut him loose, berating him for assuming a title he assumed, reasonably, was his to hold. Whether DCLG's actions have enhanced Gale's professional reputation is unclear.

Ultimately, this is all about the increasingly brutal politics of welfare: the high stakes battle over who - ministers or local authorities - takes the blame when the consequences of the government's welfare reforms start to cause serious grief next year. Former housing minister Grant Shapps' skirmish with (ironically) Newham in April was a foretaste of this: as the battle continues it will, I suspect, only get dirtier.